Quechua languages
Encyclopedia
Quechua is a Native South American language family
and dialect cluster spoken primarily in the Andes
of South America
, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas
, with a total of probably some 8 to 10 million speakers (estimates vary widely). At the time of the conquest, the Incans referred to their language as "runasimi", only later to be mistakenly called quechua by conquistadores. Many contemporary Andean Quechua speakers still call it 'runasimi' (or regional variants thereof), literally 'people speech', although 'runa' here has the more specific sense of indigenous Andean people.
, although three major regions can be distinguished:
Speakers from different points within any one of these major regions can generally understand each other reasonably well. There are nonetheless significant local-level differences across each. (Huancayo
Quechua, in particular, has several very distinctive characteristics that make this variety distinctly difficult to understand, even for other Central Quechua speakers.) Speakers from different major regions, meanwhile, particularly Central vs Southern Quechua, are not able to communicate effectively.
The lack of mutual intelligibility
is the basic criterion that defines Quechua not as a single language, as it is often mistakenly described, but as a language family. The complex and progressive nature of how speech varies across the dialect continua zones makes it nearly impossible to put a precise number on how many different Quechua languages or dialects there are; the Ethnologue lists 44. As a reference point, the overall degree of diversity across the family is a little less than that for the Romance
or Germanic
language families, and more of the order of Slavic
or Arabic.
, Germanic
, Slavic
or Arabic entails considering the linguistic process that explains other cases. Several studies (Alfredo Torero or Rodolfo Cerrón Palomino) show that the oldest form of Quechua appeared in Cajamarquilla, Lima. Afterwards, the main focus of this language was the famous zone of Pachacamac
(Lima). A third period of expansion was Chincha
(Ica). At this time, the Incas found out that the Quechua was very widespread and decided that this was a tool to achieve the unification of the Empire. Thus the language began to spread across the Andes more enthusiastically.
Quechua had already expanded across wide ranges of the central Andes long even before the Incas
, who were just one among many groups who already spoke forms of Quechua across much of Peru. Quechua arrived at Cuzco and was influenced by languages like Aymara
. This fact explains that the Cuzco variety was not the more widespread. In similar way, a diverse group of dialects appeared while the Inca Empire ruled and imposed Quechua.
After the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, Quechua continued to see considerable usage, as the general language and main means of communication between the Spaniards and the indigenous population, including for the Roman Catholic Church
as a language of evangelisation. The range of Quechua thus continued to expand in some areas. However, the administrative and religious use of Quechua was terminated when it was banned from public use in Peru in the late 18th century in response to the Túpac Amaru II
rebellion – even "loyal" pro-Catholic texts such as Garcilaso de la Vega's Comentarios Reales were banned. Despite a brief revival immediately after independence, the prestige of Quechua decreased sharply and it gradually became restricted to rural areas.
The oldest written records of the language are those of Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás, who arrived in Peru in 1538 and learned the language from 1540, publishing his Grammatica o arte de la lengua general de los indios de los reynos del Perú in 1560.
and in the first two also with Aymara
. Before the arrival of the Spaniards and the introduction of the Latin alphabet
, Quechua had no written alphabet. The Incas kept track of numerical data through a system of quipu
(knotted strings).
Currently, the major obstacle to the diffusion of the usage and teaching of Quechua is the lack of written material in the Quechua language, namely books, newspapers, software, magazines, etc. Thus, Quechua, along with Aymara and the minor indigenous languages, remains essentially an oral language.
In recent years, Quechua has been introduced in Intercultural bilingual education
(IBE) in Bolivia
, Ecuador
and Peru
, which is, however reaching only a part of the Quechua-speaking population.
In spite of a growing realization of its value as a national symbol and vehicle of native culture in the respective countries, there is an ongoing process of Quechua-speaking populations shifting to Spanish for the purposes of social advancement.
Quechua and Spanish are now heavily intermixed, with many hundreds of Spanish loanwords in Quechua. Conversely, Quechua phrases and words are commonly used by Spanish speakers. In southern rural Bolivia, for instance, many Quechua words such as wawa (infant), misi (cat), waska (strap, or thrashing) are as commonly used as their Spanish counterparts, even in entirely Spanish-speaking areas. Quechua have also had a profound impact on other native languages of the Americas, for example Mapudungun
.
, and these two families have sometimes been grouped together as a larger Quechumaran linguistic stock. This hypothesis is generally rejected by most specialists, however; the parallels are better explained by mutual influences and word-borrowing because of intensive and long-term contacts between their speaker populations. Many Quechua-Aymara cognates are close, often closer than intra-Quechua cognates, and there is little relationship in the affix
al system.
The name quichua is first used by Domingo de Santo Tomás
in his Grammatica o arte de la lengua general de los indios de los reynos del Perú, where he also mentions the mythical origin of the language, also quoted by Pedro Cieza de León
and Bernabé Cobo
. This myth held that the lengua general (the name by which Quechua was most widely known in the early colonial period) originated with the Quichua people, from modern Andahuaylas Province
. The Hispanicised spellings Quechua and Quichua have been used in Peru and Bolivia since the 17th century, especially after the III Lima Council
.
Today the various local pronunciations of Quechua include ˈqʰeʃwa ˈsimi, ˈχetʃwa ˈʃimi, ˈkitʃwa ˈʃimi, ˈʔitʃwa ˈʃimi.
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The varieties of Quechua are subdivided as follows, according to the traditional classification devised largely by Alfredo Torero
and mostly adhered to by Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino. The validity of this classification is strongly disputed, however, by other Quechuan linguists, since a number of regional varieties of Quechua, particularly those of Northern Peru (Cajamarca
–Inkawasi
), Pacaraos
and the Yauyos
province of the Lima
department, do not classify well with either QI or QII and seem to be intermediate between the two branches.
Willem Adelaar
largely adheres to the major QI-QII distinction, but does not accept QIIa as a valid unit. Other linguists such as Peter Landerman, Gerald Taylor and Paul Heggarty suggest more radical revisions to the whole classification. Landerman proposes a geographically based nomenclature (as for most other language families such as Germanic
or Slavic
) which identifies four regions: Northern (Ecuador and some small neighbouring areas); North Peruvian (Cajamarca–Inkawasi); Central (Ancash to Huancayo); Southern (from Huancavelica southwards).
There follows, for reference, the (much disputed) traditional Torero classification.
Quechua II or Wamp'una (Traveler) is divided into three branches:
The most reliable figures are to be found in the census results of Peru (2007) and Bolivia (2001), though they are probably altogether too low due to underreporting. The 2001 Ecuador census seems to be a prominent example of underreporting, as it comes up with only 499,292 speakers of all Ecuadorian varieties of Kichwa
(Quichua) combined, where other sources estimate between 1.5 and 2.2 million speakers.
Additionally, there may be hundreds of thousands of speakers outside the traditionally Quechua speaking territories, in immigrant communities.
s have entered English
via Spanish
, including ayahuasca
, coca
, cóndor
, guano
, jerky
, llama
, pampa
, puma
, quinine
, quinoa
, vicuña
and possibly gaucho
. The word lagniappe
comes from the Quechuan word yapay ("to increase; to add") with the Spanish
article la in front of it, la yapa or la ñapa in Spanish.
The influence on Latin American Spanish includes such borrowings as papa for "potato", chuchaqui for "hangover" in Ecuador
, and diverse borrowings for "altitude sickness
", in Bolivia
from Quechuan suruqch'i to Bolivian sorojchi, in Colombia
, Ecuador
, and Peru
soroche.
Quechua has borrowed a large number of Spanish
words, such as piru (from pero, but), bwenu (from bueno, good), and burru (from burro, donkey).
; there are significant differences in other varieties of Quechua.
vowels /a/ /i/ and /u/ may also be used. When the vowels appear adjacent to the uvular consonants /q/, /qʼ/, and /qʰ/, they are rendered more like [ɑ], [ɛ] and [ɔ] respectively.
None of the plosives or fricatives are voiced; voicing is not phonemic
in the Quechua native vocabulary of the modern Cusco variety.
About 30% of the modern Quechua vocabulary is borrowed from Spanish, and some Spanish sounds (e.g. f, b, d, g) may have become phonemic, even among monolingual Quechua speakers.
Until the 20th century, Quechua was written with a Spanish-based orthography
. Examples: Inca, Huayna Cápac, Collasuyo, Mama Ocllo, Viracocha, quipu, tambo, condor. This orthography is the most familiar to Spanish speakers, and as a corollary, has been used for most borrowings into English.
In 1975, the Peruvian government of Juan Velasco adopted a new orthography for Quechua. This is the writing system preferred by the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua
. Examples: Inka, Wayna Qhapaq, Qollasuyu, Mama Oqllo, Wiraqocha, khipu, tampu, kuntur. This orthography:
In 1985, a variation of this system was adopted by the Peruvian government; it uses the Quechuan three-vowel system. Examples: Inka, Wayna Qhapaq, Qullasuyu, Mama Uqllu, Wiraqucha, khipu, tampu, kuntur.
The different orthographies are still highly controversial in Peru. Advocates of the traditional system believe that the new orthographies look too foreign, and suggest that it makes Quechua harder to learn for people who have first been exposed to written Spanish. Those who prefer the new system maintain that it better matches the phonology of Quechua, and point to studies showing that teaching the five-vowel system to children causes reading difficulties in Spanish later on.
For more on this, see Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift
.
Writers differ in the treatment of Spanish loanwords. Sometimes these are adapted to the modern orthography, and sometimes they are left in Spanish. For instance, "I am Roberto" could be written Robertom kani or Ruwirtum kani. (The -m is not part of the name; it is an evidential suffix.)
The Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino has proposed an orthographic norm for all Southern Quechua
. This norm, el Quechua estándar or Hanan Runasimi, which is accepted by many institutions in Peru, has been made by combining conservative features of two common dialects: Ayacucho Quechua
and Qusqu-Qullaw
Quechua (spoken in Cusco, Puno, Bolivia, and Argentina). For instance:
To listen to recordings of these and many other words as pronounced in many different Quechua-speaking regions, see the external website The Sounds of the Andean Languages. There is also a full section on the new Quechua and Aymara Spelling.
s, as opposed to isolating
or fusional
ones. Their normal sentence order is SOV (subject–object–verb). Their large number of suffix
es changes both the overall significance of words and their subtle shades of meaning. Notable grammatical features include bipersonal conjugation
(verbs agree with both subject and object), evidentiality
(indication of the source and veracity of knowledge), a set of topic particles
, and suffixes indicating who benefits from an action and the speaker's attitude toward it, although some languages and varieties may lack some of these characteristics.
In Quechua, there are seven pronoun
s. Quechua has two first person plural pronouns ("we", in English). One is called the inclusive
, which is used when the speaker wishes to include in "we" the person to whom he or she is speaking ("we and you"). The other form is called the exclusive, which is used when the addressee
is excluded. ("we without you"). Quechua also adds the suffix -kuna to the second and third person singular pronouns qam and pay to create the plural forms qam-kuna and pay-kuna.
s in Quechua are always placed before nouns. They lack gender and number, and are not declined to agree with substantives
.
roots accept suffixes which indicate person
(defining of possession, not identity), number
, and case
. In general, the personal suffix precedes that of number – in the Santiago del Estero
variety, however, the order is reversed. From variety to variety, suffixes may change.
s can be formed by adding -ta or, in some cases, -lla to an adjective: allin – allinta ("good – well"), utqay – utqaylla ("quick – quickly"). They are also formed by adding suffixes to demonstrative
s: chay ("that") – chaypi ("there"), kay ("this") – kayman ("hither").
There are several original adverbs. For Europeans, it is striking that the adverb qhipa means both "behind" and "future", whereas ñawpa means "ahead, in front" and "past". This means that local and temporal concepts of adverbs in Quechua (as well as in Aymara
) are associated to each other reversely compared to European languages. For the speakers of Quechua, we are moving backwards into the future (we cannot see it – i.e. it is unknown), facing the past (we can see it – i.e. we remember it).
The suffixes shown in the table above usually indicate the subject; the person of the object is also indicated by a suffix (-a- for first person and -su- for second person), which precedes the suffixes in the table. In such cases, the plural suffixes from the table (-chik and -ku) can be used to express the number of the object rather than the subject.
Various suffixes are added to the stem to change the meaning. For example, -chi is a causative and -ku is a reflexive (example: wañuy = "to die"; wañuchiy = to kill wañuchikuy = "to commit suicide"); -naku is used for mutual action (example: marq'ay= "to hug"; marq'anakuy= "to hug each other"), and -chka is a progressive, used for an ongoing action (e.g., mikhuy = "to eat"; mikhuchkay = "to be eating").
are indeclinable, that is, they do not accept suffixes. They are relatively rare. The most common are arí ("yes") and mana ("no"), although mana can take some suffixes, such as -n/-m (manan/manam), -raq (manaraq, not yet) and -chu (manachu?, or not?), to intensify the meaning. Also used are yaw ("hey", "hi"), and certain loan words from Spanish, such as piru (from Spanish pero "but") and sinuqa (from sino "rather").
The evidential clitics are not restricted to nouns; they can attach to any word in the sentence, typically the comment (as opposed to the topic).
As in the case of the Mesoamerican civilizations, there are a number of surviving Andean documents in the local language that were written down in Latin characters after the European conquest, but which express to a great extent the culture of pre-conquest times. The Quechua literature of this type is somewhat scantier, but nevertheless significant. It includes the so-called Huarochiri manuscript (1598), describing the mythology and religion of the valley of Huarochiri, as well as Quechua poems quoted within the Spanish-language texts of some chronicles dealing with the pre-conquest period. There are a number of anonymous or signed Quechua dramas dating from the post-conquest period (starting from the 17th century), some of which deal with the Inca era, while most are on religious topics and of European inspiration. The most famous of these dramas are Ollanta and the plays describing the death of Atahualpa
. For example, Juan de Espinosa Medrano
wrote several dramas in the language. Poems in Quechua were also composed during the colonial period.
Dramas and poems continued to be written in the 19th and especially in 20th centuries as well; in addition, in the 20th century and more recently, more prose has been published. While some of that literature consists of original compositions (poems and dramas), the bulk of 20th century Quechua literature consists of traditional folk stories and oral narratives. Johnny Payne has translated two sets of Quechua oral short stories, one into Spanish and the other into English.
Many Andean musicians write and sing in their native languages, including Quechua and Aymara. Notable musical groups are Los Kjarkas
, Kala Marka, J'acha Mallku, Savia Andina
, Wayna Picchu, Wara
and many others.
Dictionaries
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
and dialect cluster spoken primarily in the Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
of South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
, with a total of probably some 8 to 10 million speakers (estimates vary widely). At the time of the conquest, the Incans referred to their language as "runasimi", only later to be mistakenly called quechua by conquistadores. Many contemporary Andean Quechua speakers still call it 'runasimi' (or regional variants thereof), literally 'people speech', although 'runa' here has the more specific sense of indigenous Andean people.
Language/dialect groupings
There are few sharp boundaries between what might be identified as specific 'languages' within the Quechuan family, which consists of large zones of dialect continuaDialect continuum
A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the...
, although three major regions can be distinguished:
- Ecuador QuechuaKichwaKichwa is a Quechuan language, and includes all Quechua varieties spoken in Ecuador and Colombia by approximately 2,500,000 people...
(usually known there as 'Quichua' or 'KichwaKichwaKichwa is a Quechuan language, and includes all Quechua varieties spoken in Ecuador and Colombia by approximately 2,500,000 people...
'), both in the highlands and the Amazon RiverAmazon RiverThe Amazon of South America is the second longest river in the world and by far the largest by waterflow with an average discharge greater than the next seven largest rivers combined...
valley, with pockets also in southern and Amazonian PeruPeruPeru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
. - Central Quechua, spoken in the highlands from the Ancash to HuancayoHuancayoHuancayo with a rock') is the capital of the Junín Region, in the central highlands of Peru. It is located in Junín Province, of which it is also capital. Situated near the Mantaro Valley at an altitude of 3,271 meters, it has a population of 377,000 and is the fifth most populous city of the...
regions in north-central PeruPeruPeru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
. - Southern QuechuaSouthern QuechuaSouthern Quechua , or only Quechua, is the most widely spoken of the major regional groupings of mutually intelligible dialects within the Quechua language family, with about 5 million speakers...
, with the largest number of speakers, in all regions further south, again mostly highlands: from HuancavelicaHuancavelicaHuancavelica is a city in Peru. It is the capital of the Huancavelica region and has a population of approximately 40,000. Indigenous peoples represent a major percentage of the population. It has an approximate altitude of 3,600 meters; the climate is cold and dry between the months of February...
through the AyacuchoAyacuchoAyacucho is the capital city of Huamanga Province, Ayacucho Region, Peru.Ayacucho is famous for its 33 churches, which represent one for each year of Jesus's life. Ayacucho has large religious celebrations, especially during the Holy Week of Easter...
, Cuzco and PunoPunoPuno is a city in southeastern Peru, located on the shore of Lake Titicaca. It is the capital city of the Puno Region and the Puno Province with a population of approximately 100,000. The city was established in 1668 by viceroy Pedro Antonio Fernández de Castro as capital of the province of...
regions of PeruPeruPeru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
, across much of BoliviaBoliviaBolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
and in pockets in north-western ArgentinaArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
.
Speakers from different points within any one of these major regions can generally understand each other reasonably well. There are nonetheless significant local-level differences across each. (Huancayo
Huancayo
Huancayo with a rock') is the capital of the Junín Region, in the central highlands of Peru. It is located in Junín Province, of which it is also capital. Situated near the Mantaro Valley at an altitude of 3,271 meters, it has a population of 377,000 and is the fifth most populous city of the...
Quechua, in particular, has several very distinctive characteristics that make this variety distinctly difficult to understand, even for other Central Quechua speakers.) Speakers from different major regions, meanwhile, particularly Central vs Southern Quechua, are not able to communicate effectively.
The lack of mutual intelligibility
Mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort...
is the basic criterion that defines Quechua not as a single language, as it is often mistakenly described, but as a language family. The complex and progressive nature of how speech varies across the dialect continua zones makes it nearly impossible to put a precise number on how many different Quechua languages or dialects there are; the Ethnologue lists 44. As a reference point, the overall degree of diversity across the family is a little less than that for the Romance
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
or Germanic
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
language families, and more of the order of Slavic
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
or Arabic.
History: origins and divergence
To compare with the historically known language families such as RomanceRomance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
, Germanic
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
, Slavic
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
or Arabic entails considering the linguistic process that explains other cases. Several studies (Alfredo Torero or Rodolfo Cerrón Palomino) show that the oldest form of Quechua appeared in Cajamarquilla, Lima. Afterwards, the main focus of this language was the famous zone of Pachacamac
Pachacamac
The temple of Pachacamac is an archaeological site 40 km southeast of Lima, Peru in the Valley of the Lurín River. Most of the common buildings and temples were built c...
(Lima). A third period of expansion was Chincha
Chincha
The Chincha were a Native American people of the Andes. They are discussed by Maria Rostworowski de Diez Canseco in "History of the Inca Realm" and by Justo Caceres Macedo in "Prehispanic Cultures of Peru"...
(Ica). At this time, the Incas found out that the Quechua was very widespread and decided that this was a tool to achieve the unification of the Empire. Thus the language began to spread across the Andes more enthusiastically.
Quechua had already expanded across wide ranges of the central Andes long even before the Incas
Inca Empire
The Inca Empire, or Inka Empire , was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was located in Cusco in modern-day Peru. The Inca civilization arose from the highlands of Peru sometime in the early 13th century...
, who were just one among many groups who already spoke forms of Quechua across much of Peru. Quechua arrived at Cuzco and was influenced by languages like Aymara
Aymara language
Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia...
. This fact explains that the Cuzco variety was not the more widespread. In similar way, a diverse group of dialects appeared while the Inca Empire ruled and imposed Quechua.
After the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, Quechua continued to see considerable usage, as the general language and main means of communication between the Spaniards and the indigenous population, including for the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
as a language of evangelisation. The range of Quechua thus continued to expand in some areas. However, the administrative and religious use of Quechua was terminated when it was banned from public use in Peru in the late 18th century in response to the Túpac Amaru II
Túpac Amaru II
Túpac Amaru II was a leader of an indigenous uprising in 1780 against the Spanish in Peru...
rebellion – even "loyal" pro-Catholic texts such as Garcilaso de la Vega's Comentarios Reales were banned. Despite a brief revival immediately after independence, the prestige of Quechua decreased sharply and it gradually became restricted to rural areas.
The oldest written records of the language are those of Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás, who arrived in Peru in 1538 and learned the language from 1540, publishing his Grammatica o arte de la lengua general de los indios de los reynos del Perú in 1560.
Current status
Today, Quechua has the status of an official language in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador along with SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and in the first two also with Aymara
Aymara language
Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia...
. Before the arrival of the Spaniards and the introduction of the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, Quechua had no written alphabet. The Incas kept track of numerical data through a system of quipu
Quipu
Quipus or khipus were recording devices used in the Inca Empire and its predecessor societies in the Andean region. A quipu usually consisted of colored, spun, and plied thread or strings from llama or alpaca hair. It could also be made of cotton cords...
(knotted strings).
Currently, the major obstacle to the diffusion of the usage and teaching of Quechua is the lack of written material in the Quechua language, namely books, newspapers, software, magazines, etc. Thus, Quechua, along with Aymara and the minor indigenous languages, remains essentially an oral language.
In recent years, Quechua has been introduced in Intercultural bilingual education
Intercultural bilingual education
Intercultural bilingual education or bilingual intercultural education is an intercultural and bilingual model of education designed for contexts with two cultures and languages in contact, in the typical case a dominant and an underprivileged culture...
(IBE) in Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
, Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
and Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
, which is, however reaching only a part of the Quechua-speaking population.
In spite of a growing realization of its value as a national symbol and vehicle of native culture in the respective countries, there is an ongoing process of Quechua-speaking populations shifting to Spanish for the purposes of social advancement.
Quechua and Spanish are now heavily intermixed, with many hundreds of Spanish loanwords in Quechua. Conversely, Quechua phrases and words are commonly used by Spanish speakers. In southern rural Bolivia, for instance, many Quechua words such as wawa (infant), misi (cat), waska (strap, or thrashing) are as commonly used as their Spanish counterparts, even in entirely Spanish-speaking areas. Quechua have also had a profound impact on other native languages of the Americas, for example Mapudungun
Mapudungun
The Mapuche language, Mapudungun is a language isolate spoken in south-central Chile and west central Argentina by the Mapuche people. It is also spelled Mapuzugun and sometimes called Mapudungu or Araucanian...
.
Quechua and Aymara
Quechua shares a large amount of vocabulary, and some striking structural parallels, with AymaraAymara language
Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia...
, and these two families have sometimes been grouped together as a larger Quechumaran linguistic stock. This hypothesis is generally rejected by most specialists, however; the parallels are better explained by mutual influences and word-borrowing because of intensive and long-term contacts between their speaker populations. Many Quechua-Aymara cognates are close, often closer than intra-Quechua cognates, and there is little relationship in the affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
al system.
Etymology of *qiĉwa
The native word */qiĉ.wa/ originally referred to the 'temperate valley' altitude ecological zone in the Andes (suitable for maize cultivation). Use of the word to describe the language (by an indirect association) is recorded relatively early in the colonial period, and seems to have been begun by the Spaniards, not Quechua-speakers themselves. The name that native speakers give to their own language is "Runa Simi".The name quichua is first used by Domingo de Santo Tomás
Domingo de Santo Tomás
Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás, O.P. was a Spanish Dominican and grammarian who compiled the first Quechua grammar....
in his Grammatica o arte de la lengua general de los indios de los reynos del Perú, where he also mentions the mythical origin of the language, also quoted by Pedro Cieza de León
Pedro Cieza de León
Pedro Cieza de León was a Spanish conquistador and chronicler of Peru. He is known primarily for his history and description of Peru, Crónicas del Perú...
and Bernabé Cobo
Bernabé Cobo
Bernabé Cobo was a Spanish Jesuit missionary and writer. He played a part in the early history of quinine by his description of cinchona bark; he brought some to Europe on a visit in 1632....
. This myth held that the lengua general (the name by which Quechua was most widely known in the early colonial period) originated with the Quichua people, from modern Andahuaylas Province
Andahuaylas Province
Andahuaylas Province is the second largest of the seven provinces of the Apurímac Region in Peru. The capital of the province is the city of Andahuaylas...
. The Hispanicised spellings Quechua and Quichua have been used in Peru and Bolivia since the 17th century, especially after the III Lima Council
Third Council of Lima
The Third Council of Lima was a council of the Roman Catholic Church in Lima, at the time the capital of the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru. It was the most important of the three councils celebrated in Lima during the 16th century, since it definitively organized the Church in the Americas...
.
Today the various local pronunciations of Quechua include ˈqʰeʃwa ˈsimi, ˈχetʃwa ˈʃimi, ˈkitʃwa ˈʃimi, ˈʔitʃwa ˈʃimi.
Classification
Alfredo Torero
Alfredo Augusto Torero Fernández de Córdova was a Peruvian anthropologist and linguist....
and mostly adhered to by Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino. The validity of this classification is strongly disputed, however, by other Quechuan linguists, since a number of regional varieties of Quechua, particularly those of Northern Peru (Cajamarca
Cajamarca Quechua
Cajamarca Quechua is a variety of Quechua spoken in the districts of Chetilla, Baños del Inca and Cajamarca in the Peruvian province of Cajamarca.It was never spoken throughout the region, where other indigenous languages were spoken as well, e.g...
–Inkawasi
Inkawasi-Kañaris
Inkawasi-Kañaris is a variety of Quechua spoken in the districts of Incahuasi and Cañaris, Ferreñafe in the Peruvian region of Lambayeque.Inkawasi-Kañaris Quechua belongs to Quechua II, subgroup Yunkay and is closest to Cajamarca Quechua.-Bibliography:...
), Pacaraos
Pacaraos Quechua
Pacaraos Quechua is a variety of Quechua spoken until the middle of the 20th century in the community of Pacaraos in the Peruvian Lima Region in the Chancay valley up to 3000 m above sea level....
and the Yauyos
Yauyos
Yauyos is a town in Central Peru, capital of the province Yauyos in the region Lima. The city is the seat of the Territorial Prelature of Yauyos....
province of the Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
department, do not classify well with either QI or QII and seem to be intermediate between the two branches.
Willem Adelaar
Willem Adelaar
Willem F. H. Adelaar is a Dutch linguist on American autochthonous languages, specially Andean languages. He is Professor of indigenous American Linguistics and Cultures at Leiden University.-Selected publications:...
largely adheres to the major QI-QII distinction, but does not accept QIIa as a valid unit. Other linguists such as Peter Landerman, Gerald Taylor and Paul Heggarty suggest more radical revisions to the whole classification. Landerman proposes a geographically based nomenclature (as for most other language families such as Germanic
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
or Slavic
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
) which identifies four regions: Northern (Ecuador and some small neighbouring areas); North Peruvian (Cajamarca–Inkawasi); Central (Ancash to Huancayo); Southern (from Huancavelica southwards).
There follows, for reference, the (much disputed) traditional Torero classification.
- Quechua I or Quechua B or Central Quechua or Waywash, spoken in Peru's central highlands and coast.
- The most widely spoken varieties are Huaylas Ancash, Huaylla Wanca, Northern Conchucos Ancash, and Southern Conchucos Ancash.
- Quechua II or Quechua A or Peripheral Quechua or Wanp'una, divided into
- Yungay Quechua or Quechua II A, spoken in the northern mountains of Peru; the most widely spoken dialect is Cajamarca.
- Northern Quechua or Quechua II B, spoken in Ecuador (KichwaKichwaKichwa is a Quechuan language, and includes all Quechua varieties spoken in Ecuador and Colombia by approximately 2,500,000 people...
), northern Peru, and Colombia (Inga KichwaInga KichwaInga Kichwa is a Quechua language spoken in the Colombian Putumayo region by the Inga people. There are two dialects: Highland Inga, spoken in the Sibundoy valley; and Jungle Inga, spoken on the Putumayo and Japurá Rivers. Inga Kichwa belongs to Quechua II subgroup Kichwa .-External links:*...
)- The most widely spoken varieties are Chimborazo Highland Quichua and Imbabura Highland Quichua.
- Southern QuechuaSouthern QuechuaSouthern Quechua , or only Quechua, is the most widely spoken of the major regional groupings of mutually intelligible dialects within the Quechua language family, with about 5 million speakers...
or Quechua II C, spoken in Bolivia, southern Peru, Chile, and Argentina.- The most widely spoken varieties are South Bolivian, Cuzco, Ayacucho, and Puno.
Geographical distribution
Quechua I or Waywash is spoken in Peru's central highlands. It is the most diverse branch of Quechua, such that its dialects have often been considered different languages.Quechua II or Wamp'una (Traveler) is divided into three branches:
- II-A: Yunkay Quechua is spoken sporadically in Peru's occidental highlands;
- II-B: Northern Quechua (also known as Runashimi or, especially in Ecuador, KichwaKichwaKichwa is a Quechuan language, and includes all Quechua varieties spoken in Ecuador and Colombia by approximately 2,500,000 people...
) is mainly spoken in Colombia and Ecuador. It is also spoken in the Amazonian lowlands in Ecuador and Peru; - II-C: Southern QuechuaSouthern QuechuaSouthern Quechua , or only Quechua, is the most widely spoken of the major regional groupings of mutually intelligible dialects within the Quechua language family, with about 5 million speakers...
, spoken in Peru's southern highlands, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, is today's most important branch because it has the largest number of speakers and because of its cultural and literary legacy.
Cognates
A sampling of words in several Quechua dialects:| Standardized Southern Quechua Southern Quechua Southern Quechua , or only Quechua, is the most widely spoken of the major regional groupings of mutually intelligible dialects within the Quechua language family, with about 5 million speakers... |
Ayacucho | Cuzco | Bolivia | Ecuador | Cajamarca | San Martin | Junin | Ancash | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 'ten' | chunka | chunka | chunka | chunka | chunga | trunka | chunka | trunka | chunka |
| 'sweet' | misk'i | miski | misk'i | misk'i | mishki | mishki | mishki | mishki | mishki |
| 'he gives' | qun | qun | qun | qun | kun | qun | kun | un | qun |
| 'one' | huk | huk | hux | ux | shuk | suh | suk | huk | huk |
| 'two' | iskay |
iskay |
iskay |
iskay |
iskay |
iskay |
iskay |
iskay |
ishke |
| 'yes' | arí |
arí |
arí |
arí |
arí |
arí |
arí |
arí |
aumi |
| 'white' | yuraq | yuraq | yuraq | yuraq | yurak | yuraq | yurak | yulaq | yuraq |
Number of speakers
The number of speakers given varies widely according to the sources.The most reliable figures are to be found in the census results of Peru (2007) and Bolivia (2001), though they are probably altogether too low due to underreporting. The 2001 Ecuador census seems to be a prominent example of underreporting, as it comes up with only 499,292 speakers of all Ecuadorian varieties of Kichwa
Kichwa
Kichwa is a Quechuan language, and includes all Quechua varieties spoken in Ecuador and Colombia by approximately 2,500,000 people...
(Quichua) combined, where other sources estimate between 1.5 and 2.2 million speakers.
- Argentina: 100,000
- Bolivia: 2,100,000 (2001 census)
- Brazil: unknown
- Chile: very few, spoken in pockets in the Chilean Altiplano (Ethnologue)
- Colombia: 9,000 (Ethnologue)
- Ecuador: 500,000 to 1,000,000
- Peru: 3,262,100 (2007 census)
Additionally, there may be hundreds of thousands of speakers outside the traditionally Quechua speaking territories, in immigrant communities.
Vocabulary
A number of Quechua loanwordLoanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s have entered English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
via Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, including ayahuasca
Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp. vine, usually mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine-containing species of shrubs from the Psychotria genus...
, coca
Coca
Coca, Erythroxylum coca, is a plant in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. The plant plays a significant role in many traditional Andean cultures...
, cóndor
Condor
Condor is the name for two species of New World vultures, each in a monotypic genus. They are the largest flying land birds in the Western Hemisphere.They are:* The Andean Condor which inhabits the Andean mountains....
, guano
Guano
Guano is the excrement of seabirds, cave dwelling bats, and seals. Guano manure is an effective fertilizer due to its high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen and also its lack of odor. It was an important source of nitrates for gunpowder...
, jerky
Jerky (food)
Jerky is lean meat that has been trimmed of fat, cut into strips, and then been dried to prevent spoilage. Normally, this drying includes the addition of salt, to prevent bacteria from developing on the meat before sufficient moisture has been removed. The word "jerky" is a bastardization of the...
, llama
Llama
The llama is a South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures since pre-Hispanic times....
, pampa
Pampa
The Pampas are the fertile South American lowlands, covering more than , that include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and Córdoba, most of Uruguay, and the southernmost Brazilian State, Rio Grande do Sul...
, puma
Puma
The cougar , also known as puma, mountain lion, mountain cat, catamount or panther, depending on the region, is a mammal of the family Felidae, native to the Americas...
, quinine
Quinine
Quinine is a natural white crystalline alkaloid having antipyretic , antimalarial, analgesic , anti-inflammatory properties and a bitter taste. It is a stereoisomer of quinidine which, unlike quinine, is an anti-arrhythmic...
, quinoa
Quinoa
Quinoa , a species of goosefoot , is a grain-like crop grown primarily for its edible seeds. It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal, or grain, as it is not a member of the grass family...
, vicuña
Vicuña
The vicuña or vicugna is one of two wild South American camelids, along with the guanaco, which live in the high alpine areas of the Andes. It is a relative of the llama, and is now believed to share a wild ancestor with domesticated alpacas, which are raised for their fibre...
and possibly gaucho
Gaucho
Gaucho is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, chacos, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile, and Southern Brazil...
. The word lagniappe
Lagniappe
A lagniappe is a small gift given to a customer by a merchant at the time of a purchase , or more broadly, "something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure." The word is chiefly used in the Gulf Coast of the United States, but the concept is practiced in many countries where...
comes from the Quechuan word yapay ("to increase; to add") with the Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
article la in front of it, la yapa or la ñapa in Spanish.
The influence on Latin American Spanish includes such borrowings as papa for "potato", chuchaqui for "hangover" in Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
, and diverse borrowings for "altitude sickness
Altitude sickness
Altitude sickness—also known as acute mountain sickness , altitude illness, hypobaropathy, or soroche—is a pathological effect of high altitude on humans, caused by acute exposure to low partial pressure of oxygen at high altitude...
", in Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
from Quechuan suruqch'i to Bolivian sorojchi, in Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
, and Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
soroche.
Quechua has borrowed a large number of Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
words, such as piru (from pero, but), bwenu (from bueno, good), and burru (from burro, donkey).
Phonology
The description below applies to Cusco dialectQusqu-Qullaw
Qusqu-Qullaw is a variety of the Quechua language family, spoken throughout southern Peru , Bolivia, and northern Argentina, including the prestige dialect of Cusco Quechua. With about four million speakers, it is one of the largest dialects, along with Ayacucho Quechua...
; there are significant differences in other varieties of Quechua.
Vowels
Quechua uses only three vowel phonemes: /a/ /i/ and /u/, as in Aymara (including Jaqaru). Monolingual speakers pronounce these as [æ] [ɪ] and [ʊ] respectively, though the SpanishSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
vowels /a/ /i/ and /u/ may also be used. When the vowels appear adjacent to the uvular consonants /q/, /qʼ/, and /qʰ/, they are rendered more like [ɑ], [ɛ] and [ɔ] respectively.
Consonants
| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... / Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ɲ | ||||
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
plain | p | t | tʃ | k | q | |
| aspirated Aspiration (phonetics) In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ... |
pʰ | tʰ | tʃʰ | kʰ | qʰ | ||
| ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants... |
p’ | t’ | tʃ’ | k’ | q’ | ||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
s | h | |||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
j | w | |||||
| Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
l | ʎ | |||||
| Rhotic Rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet... |
ɾ | ||||||
None of the plosives or fricatives are voiced; voicing is not phonemic
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
in the Quechua native vocabulary of the modern Cusco variety.
About 30% of the modern Quechua vocabulary is borrowed from Spanish, and some Spanish sounds (e.g. f, b, d, g) may have become phonemic, even among monolingual Quechua speakers.
Writing system
Quechua has been written using the Roman alphabet since the Spanish conquest of Peru. However, written Quechua is not utilized by the Quechua-speaking people at large due to the lack of printed referential material in Quechua.Until the 20th century, Quechua was written with a Spanish-based orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
. Examples: Inca, Huayna Cápac, Collasuyo, Mama Ocllo, Viracocha, quipu, tambo, condor. This orthography is the most familiar to Spanish speakers, and as a corollary, has been used for most borrowings into English.
In 1975, the Peruvian government of Juan Velasco adopted a new orthography for Quechua. This is the writing system preferred by the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua
Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua
The Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua AMLQ in Cusco is a private institution, founded in 1990, concerned with the 'purity' of the Quechua language....
. Examples: Inka, Wayna Qhapaq, Qollasuyu, Mama Oqllo, Wiraqocha, khipu, tampu, kuntur. This orthography:
- uses w instead of hu for the /w/ sound.
- distinguishes velar k from uvular q, where both were spelled c or qu in the traditional system.
- distinguishes simple, ejective, and aspirated stops in dialects (such as that of CuzcoCusco RegionCusco is a region in Peru. It is bordered by the Ucayali Region on the north; the Madre de Dios and Puno regions on the east; the Arequipa Region on the south; and the Apurímac, Ayacucho and Junín regions on the west...
) which have them – thus khipu above. - continues to use the Spanish five-vowel system.
In 1985, a variation of this system was adopted by the Peruvian government; it uses the Quechuan three-vowel system. Examples: Inka, Wayna Qhapaq, Qullasuyu, Mama Uqllu, Wiraqucha, khipu, tampu, kuntur.
The different orthographies are still highly controversial in Peru. Advocates of the traditional system believe that the new orthographies look too foreign, and suggest that it makes Quechua harder to learn for people who have first been exposed to written Spanish. Those who prefer the new system maintain that it better matches the phonology of Quechua, and point to studies showing that teaching the five-vowel system to children causes reading difficulties in Spanish later on.
For more on this, see Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift
Quechuan and Aymaran spelling shift
In recent years, the spelling of place names in Peru and Bolivia has been revised among Quechua and Aymara speakers. A standardized alphabet for Quechua was adopted by the Peruvian government in 1975; a revision in 1985 moved to a three-vowel orthography....
.
Writers differ in the treatment of Spanish loanwords. Sometimes these are adapted to the modern orthography, and sometimes they are left in Spanish. For instance, "I am Roberto" could be written Robertom kani or Ruwirtum kani. (The -m is not part of the name; it is an evidential suffix.)
The Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino has proposed an orthographic norm for all Southern Quechua
Southern Quechua
Southern Quechua , or only Quechua, is the most widely spoken of the major regional groupings of mutually intelligible dialects within the Quechua language family, with about 5 million speakers...
. This norm, el Quechua estándar or Hanan Runasimi, which is accepted by many institutions in Peru, has been made by combining conservative features of two common dialects: Ayacucho Quechua
Ayacucho Quechua
Ayacucho is one dialect of the Quechua language, spoken in the Ayacucho region of Peru, as well as by immigrants from Ayacucho in Lima. With roughly a million speakers, it is one of the largest dialects of the language along with Cusco Quechua...
and Qusqu-Qullaw
Qusqu-Qullaw
Qusqu-Qullaw is a variety of the Quechua language family, spoken throughout southern Peru , Bolivia, and northern Argentina, including the prestige dialect of Cusco Quechua. With about four million speakers, it is one of the largest dialects, along with Ayacucho Quechua...
Quechua (spoken in Cusco, Puno, Bolivia, and Argentina). For instance:
| English | Ayacucho | Cusco | Southern Quechua |
|---|---|---|---|
| to drink | upyay | uhyay | upyay |
| fast | utqa | usqha | utqha |
| to work | llamkay | llank'ay | llamk'ay |
| we (inclusive) | ñuqanchik | nuqanchis | ñuqanchik |
| (progressive suffix) | -chka- | -sha- | -chka- |
| day | punchaw | p'unchay | p'unchaw |
To listen to recordings of these and many other words as pronounced in many different Quechua-speaking regions, see the external website The Sounds of the Andean Languages. There is also a full section on the new Quechua and Aymara Spelling.
Morphological type
All varieties of Quechua are very regular agglutinative languageAgglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
s, as opposed to isolating
Isolating language
An isolating language is a type of language with a low morpheme-per-word ratio — in the extreme case of an isolating language words are composed of a single morpheme...
or fusional
Fusional language
A fusional language is a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by its tendency to overlay many morphemes in a way that can be difficult to segment....
ones. Their normal sentence order is SOV (subject–object–verb). Their large number of suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es changes both the overall significance of words and their subtle shades of meaning. Notable grammatical features include bipersonal conjugation
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
(verbs agree with both subject and object), evidentiality
Evidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and/or what kind of evidence exists. An evidential is the particular grammatical element that indicates evidentiality...
(indication of the source and veracity of knowledge), a set of topic particles
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
, and suffixes indicating who benefits from an action and the speaker's attitude toward it, although some languages and varieties may lack some of these characteristics.
Pronouns
| Number | |||
| Singular | Plural | ||
| Person | First | Ñuqa | Ñuqanchik (inclusive) Ñuqayku (exclusive) |
| Second | Qam | Qamkuna | |
| Third | Pay | Paykuna |
In Quechua, there are seven pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s. Quechua has two first person plural pronouns ("we", in English). One is called the inclusive
Clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...
, which is used when the speaker wishes to include in "we" the person to whom he or she is speaking ("we and you"). The other form is called the exclusive, which is used when the addressee
Addressee
In linguistics, an addressee is an intended direct recipient of the speaker's communication. A listener is either an addressee or a bystander.Second-person pronouns refer to an addressee or a group including an addressee...
is excluded. ("we without you"). Quechua also adds the suffix -kuna to the second and third person singular pronouns qam and pay to create the plural forms qam-kuna and pay-kuna.
Adjectives
AdjectiveAdjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s in Quechua are always placed before nouns. They lack gender and number, and are not declined to agree with substantives
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
.
Numbers
- Cardinal numberCardinal numberIn mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number – the number of elements in the set. The transfinite cardinal numbers describe the sizes of infinite...
s. ch'usaq (0), huk (1), iskay (2), kimsa (3), tawa (4), pichqa (5), suqta (6), qanchis (7), pusaq (8), isqun (9), chunka (10), chunka hukniyuq (11), chunka iskayniyuq (12), iskay chunka (20), pachak (100), waranqa (1,000), hunu (1,000,000), lluna (1,000,000,000,000). - Ordinal numbers. To form ordinal numbers, the word ñiqin is put after the appropriate cardinal number (e.g., iskay ñiqin = "second"). The only exception is that, in addition to huk ñiqin ("first"), the phrase ñawpaq is also used in the somewhat more restricted sense of "the initial, primordial, the oldest".
Nouns
NounNoun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
roots accept suffixes which indicate person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
(defining of possession, not identity), number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, and case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
. In general, the personal suffix precedes that of number – in the Santiago del Estero
Santiago del Estero
Santiago del Estero is the capital of Santiago del Estero Province in northern Argentina. It has a population of 244,733 inhabitants, making it the twelfth largest city in the country, with a surface area of 2,116 km². It lies on the Dulce River and on National Route 9, at a distance of...
variety, however, the order is reversed. From variety to variety, suffixes may change.
| Function | Suffix | Example | (translation) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| suffix indicating number | plural | -kuna | wasikuna | houses |
| possessive suffix | 1.person singular | -y, -: | wasiy, wasii | my house |
| 2.person singular | -yki | wasiyki | your house | |
| 3.person singular | -n | wasin | his/her/its house | |
| 1.person plural (incl) | -nchik | wasinchik | our house (incl.) | |
| 1.person plural (excl) | -y-ku | wasiyku | our house (excl.) | |
| 2.person plural | -yki-chik | wasiykichik | your (pl.) house | |
| 3.person plural | -n-ku | wasinku | their house | |
| suffixes indicating case | nominative | – | wasi | the house (subj.) |
| accusative | -(k)ta | wasita | the house (obj.) | |
| instrumental Instrumental case The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action... |
-wan | wasiwan | with the house, and the house | |
| abessive | -naq | wasinaq | without the house | |
| dative | -paq | wasipaq | to the house | |
| genitive | -p(a) | wasip(a) | of the house | |
| causative Causative In linguistics, a causative is a form that indicates that a subject causes someone or something else to do or be something, or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event.... |
-rayku | wasirayku | because of the house | |
| benefactive | -paq | wasipaq | for the house | |
| locative | -pi | wasipi | at the house | |
| directional | -man | wasiman | towards the house | |
| inclusive Inclusive Inclusive may refer to:* Inclusion * inclusive disjunction, A or B or both* inclusive fitness, in evolutionary theory, how many kin are supported including non-descendants* inclusive interval includes its endpoints... |
-piwan, puwan | wasipiwan, wasipuwan | including the house | |
| terminative | -kama, -yaq | wasikama, wasiyaq | up to the house | |
| transitive | -(rin)ta | wasinta | through the house | |
| ablative | -manta, -piqta | wasimanta, wasipiqta | off/from the house | |
| comitative | -(ni)ntin | allquntin | along with the dog | |
| immediate Immediate Immediate may refer to:* Immediacy * Immediate Records, a British record label* The Immediate, an Irish rock group* Immediate Music, a music composition company... |
-raq | wasiraq | first the house | |
| interactive | -pura | wasipura | among the houses | |
| exclusive Exclusive Exclusive typically means not with other things or not including other things.The terms inclusive and exclusive are contrasting terms, and often appear in the same context to describe contrasting things.Exclusive may refer to:... |
-lla(m) | wasilla(m) | only the house | |
| comparative Comparative In grammar, the comparative is the form of an adjective or adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person, thing, or other entity has a property or quality greater or less in extent than that of another, and is used in this context with a subordinating conjunction, such as than,... |
-naw, -hina | wasinaw, wasihina | than the house |
Adverbs
AdverbAdverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
s can be formed by adding -ta or, in some cases, -lla to an adjective: allin – allinta ("good – well"), utqay – utqaylla ("quick – quickly"). They are also formed by adding suffixes to demonstrative
Demonstrative
In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...
s: chay ("that") – chaypi ("there"), kay ("this") – kayman ("hither").
There are several original adverbs. For Europeans, it is striking that the adverb qhipa means both "behind" and "future", whereas ñawpa means "ahead, in front" and "past". This means that local and temporal concepts of adverbs in Quechua (as well as in Aymara
Aymara language
Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia...
) are associated to each other reversely compared to European languages. For the speakers of Quechua, we are moving backwards into the future (we cannot see it – i.e. it is unknown), facing the past (we can see it – i.e. we remember it).
Verbs
The infinitive forms (unconjugated) have the suffix -y (much'a= "kiss"; much'a-y = "to kiss"). The endings for the indicative are:| Present | Past | Future | Pluperfect | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ñuqa | -ni | -rqa-ni | -saq | -sqa-ni |
| Qam | -nki | -rqa-nki | -nki | -sqa-nki |
| Pay | -n | -rqa(-n) | -nqa | -sqa |
| Ñuqanchik | -nchik | -rqa-nchik | -su-nchik | -sqa-nchik |
| Ñuqayku | -yku | -rqa-yku | -saq-ku | -sqa-yku |
| Qamkuna | -nki-chik | -rqa-nki-chik | -nki-chik | -sqa-nki-chik |
| Paykuna | -n-ku | -rqa-(n)ku | -nqa-ku | -sqa-ku |
The suffixes shown in the table above usually indicate the subject; the person of the object is also indicated by a suffix (-a- for first person and -su- for second person), which precedes the suffixes in the table. In such cases, the plural suffixes from the table (-chik and -ku) can be used to express the number of the object rather than the subject.
Various suffixes are added to the stem to change the meaning. For example, -chi is a causative and -ku is a reflexive (example: wañuy = "to die"; wañuchiy = to kill wañuchikuy = "to commit suicide"); -naku is used for mutual action (example: marq'ay= "to hug"; marq'anakuy= "to hug each other"), and -chka is a progressive, used for an ongoing action (e.g., mikhuy = "to eat"; mikhuchkay = "to be eating").
Grammatical particles
ParticlesGrammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
are indeclinable, that is, they do not accept suffixes. They are relatively rare. The most common are arí ("yes") and mana ("no"), although mana can take some suffixes, such as -n/-m (manan/manam), -raq (manaraq, not yet) and -chu (manachu?, or not?), to intensify the meaning. Also used are yaw ("hey", "hi"), and certain loan words from Spanish, such as piru (from Spanish pero "but") and sinuqa (from sino "rather").
Evidentiality
Nearly every Quechua sentence is marked by an evidential clitic, indicating the source of the speaker's knowledge (and how certain s/he is about the statement). The enclitic =mi expresses personal knowledge (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirmi, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver-- I know it for a fact"); =si expresses hearsay knowledge (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirsi, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, or so I've heard"); =chá expresses high probability (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirchá, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, most likely"). These become =m, =s, =ch after a vowel, although the latter is rarely used in its reduced form and the majority of speakers usually employ =chá, even after a vowel (Mariochá, "He's Mario, most likely").The evidential clitics are not restricted to nouns; they can attach to any word in the sentence, typically the comment (as opposed to the topic).
Literature
Although the body of literature in Quechua is not as sizable as its historical and present-day prominence would suggest, it is nevertheless not negligible.As in the case of the Mesoamerican civilizations, there are a number of surviving Andean documents in the local language that were written down in Latin characters after the European conquest, but which express to a great extent the culture of pre-conquest times. The Quechua literature of this type is somewhat scantier, but nevertheless significant. It includes the so-called Huarochiri manuscript (1598), describing the mythology and religion of the valley of Huarochiri, as well as Quechua poems quoted within the Spanish-language texts of some chronicles dealing with the pre-conquest period. There are a number of anonymous or signed Quechua dramas dating from the post-conquest period (starting from the 17th century), some of which deal with the Inca era, while most are on religious topics and of European inspiration. The most famous of these dramas are Ollanta and the plays describing the death of Atahualpa
Atahualpa
Atahualpa, Atahuallpa, Atabalipa, or Atawallpa , was the last Sapa Inca or sovereign emperor of the Tahuantinsuyu, or the Inca Empire, prior to the Spanish conquest of Peru...
. For example, Juan de Espinosa Medrano
Juan de Espinosa Medrano
Juan de Espinosa Medrano , known as El Lunarejo , was a Peruvian cleric, preacher, author of philosophical and literary tracts, and playwright. The year and place of his birth, as well as his ethnic origins, have been a matter of dispute...
wrote several dramas in the language. Poems in Quechua were also composed during the colonial period.
Dramas and poems continued to be written in the 19th and especially in 20th centuries as well; in addition, in the 20th century and more recently, more prose has been published. While some of that literature consists of original compositions (poems and dramas), the bulk of 20th century Quechua literature consists of traditional folk stories and oral narratives. Johnny Payne has translated two sets of Quechua oral short stories, one into Spanish and the other into English.
Many Andean musicians write and sing in their native languages, including Quechua and Aymara. Notable musical groups are Los Kjarkas
Los Kjarkas
Los Kjarkas is a Bolivian band from the Capinota Province in the department of Cochabamba, one of the most popular Andean pop bands in the country's history...
, Kala Marka, J'acha Mallku, Savia Andina
Savia Andina
Savia Andina was one of the first groups to have international success with traditional Andean music. They had this success starting in the 1960s and went on to have three albums to go gold. They toured Europe and are sometimes classed in the "new song/nueva cancion" movement of Latin American music...
, Wayna Picchu, Wara
WARA
WARA may refer to:* Weighted average return on assets, the collective rates of return on the various types of tangible and intangible assets of a company* WARA , a radio station licensed to New Washington, Indiana, United States...
and many others.
In popular culture
- The fictional Huttese language in the Star Wars moviesStar WarsStar Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
is largely based upon Quechua. According to Jim Wilce, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona UniversityNorthern Arizona UniversityNorthern Arizona University is a public university located in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States. It is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, and has 39 satellite campuses in the state of Arizona. The university offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees.As of...
, George LucasGeorge LucasGeorge Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
contacted a colleague of his, Allen Sonafrank, to record the dialogue. Wilce and Sonafrank discussed the matter, and felt it might be demeaning to have an alien represent the Quechua people, especially in light of Erich von DanikenErich von DänikenErich Anton Paul von Däniken is a Swiss author best known for his controversial claims about extraterrestrial influences on early human culture, in books such as Chariots of the Gods?, published in 1968...
's popular publications that claimed Inca monuments were created by aliens because "primitives" like the Incas could never have produced them. Sonafrank declined, but a grad student, who could pronounce but did not speak Quechua, recorded JabbaJabbaJabba may be:* Jabba the Hutt, fictional character* Jabba , Australian* JABBA, Japan Basketball Association* Malam Jabba, a hill station in Pakistan, which is home to the Malam Jabba Ski Resort....
's dialogue. There are reports that the dialogue was played backwards or remixed, possibly to avoid offending Quechuas. - The 90's TV series The SentinelThe Sentinel (TV series)The Sentinel is a Canadian-produced television series that aired on UPN in the United States from 1996 to 1999. It premiered on March 20, 1996, and ran for 65 episodes . The series later reaired on Syfy.-Plot and characters:...
included numerous references to the shamanism and spirituality of the Peruvian Chopec, and included many Quechua words in several episodes. - The sport retailer Decathlon GroupDecathlon GroupDecathlon is a major French sporting good chain store, with stores located throughout the world. It started with a shop near Lille, France in 1976. It expanded to Germany in 1986, Spain in 1992 and the United Kingdom in 1999. It entered the American market by purchasing the New England 20-store...
brands their mountain equipment range as QuechuaQuechua (brand)Quechua is a mountain sports brand founded in 1997 in Domancy, France, producing Hiking, Trail running, Adventure racing, Climbing and Mountaineering apparel and equipment and is sold in every store of Decathlon Group and sportswear shops. It currently employs about 150 persons. The name comes...
. - In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indy has a dialogue in Quechua with Peruvians. He explains he learned the language in Mexico from a couple of the "guys" he met while briefly riding with Pancho VillaPancho VillaJosé Doroteo Arango Arámbula – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or its hypocorism Pancho Villa – was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals....
. This adventure was featured in the pilot episode of The Young Indiana Jones ChroniclesThe Young Indiana Jones ChroniclesThe Young Indiana Jones Chronicles is an American television series that aired on ABC from March 4, 1992, to July 24, 1993. The series explores the childhood and youth of the fictional character Indiana Jones and primarily stars Sean Patrick Flanery and Corey Carrier as the title character, with...
. The guys were most likely Peruvian mercenaries recruited to the División del NorteDivision del NorteThe División del Norte was an armed faction formed by Madero and initially led by General Jose Gonzales Salas following the call to arms from Francisco Madero at the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. After Salas committed suicide following his defeat at the hands of Pascual Orozco at the...
. - In The Adventures of TintinThe Adventures of TintinThe Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...
books The Seven Crystal BallsThe Seven Crystal BallsThe Seven Crystal Balls is the thirteenth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums, written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero....
and its sequel Prisoners of the SunPrisoners of the SunPrisoners of the Sun is the fourteenth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero. It is a continuation of The Seven Crystal Balls, and is one of very few Tintin...
, there are Quechua characters who are in league with the Inca and facilitate the abduction and incarceration of Professor CalculusProfessor CalculusProfessor Cuthbert Calculus is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...
at the Temple of the Sun for committing sacrilege by wearing the funerary bangle of Rascar Capac. - In Trading Card Game Yu-Gi-Oh!Yu-Gi-Oh!is a Japanese manga created by Kazuki Takahashi. It has produced a franchise that includes multiple anime shows, a trading card game and numerous video games...
, monsters in the card series Earthbound Immortals have their name originated from Quechua. In the animated seriesYu-Gi-Oh! 5D'sis a Yu-Gi-Oh! series which aired in Japan between April 2, 2008 and March 30, 2011, following the previous series, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, and was succeeded by Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, on April 11, 2011...
, Earthbound Immortals are described as powerful beasts sealed in Nazca LinesNazca LinesThe Nazca Lines are a series of ancient geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. The high, arid plateau stretches more than between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana about 400 km south of Lima...
, which each one of them represents. - On the TV cartoon series The Emperor's New SchoolThe Emperor's New SchoolThe Emperor's New School is an American animated television series that airs on Disney Channel, ABC Kids, and Disney XD and is produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. The show is based on the characters from The Emperor's New Groove and its direct-to-video sequel Kronk's New Groove...
, the main and other characters have quechua names as Kuzco (Cusco, that means "navel of the world"), Pacha (ground) and Chicha (kind of beer).
See also
- AndesAndesThe Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
- Aymara languageAymara languageAymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia...
- List of English words of Quechuan origin
- South Bolivian QuechuaSouth Bolivian QuechuaSouth Bolivian Quechua, also known as Central Bolivian Quechua, is a variety of Southern Quechua, spoken mainly in Bolivia and belonging to Qusqu-Qullaw Quechua. It is also spoken in Argentina, where it is also known as Colla...
External links
- El Quechua de Santiago del Estero, extensive site covering the grammar of Argentinian Quechua (in Spanish)
- Quechua Language and Linguistics an extensive site.
- The Origins and Diversity of Quechua
- The Sounds of the Andean Languages listen online to pronunciations of Quechua words, see photos of speakers and their home regions, learn about the origins and varieties of Quechua.
- Toponimos del Quechua de Yungay, Peru
- Sacred Hymns of Pachacutec
- Quechua lessons (www.andes.org) in Spanish and English
- Quechua course in Spanish, by Demetrio Tupah Yupanki (Red Científica Peruana)
- Detailed map of the varieties of Quechua according to SIL (fedepi.org)
- Google Quechua
- Cuzco and Bolivian Quechua being compared, with English translations
- https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:GMNCnkViAQUJ:www.ru.nl/publish/pages/632031/modelling_the_quechua.pdf+Modelling+the+Quechua-Aymara+relationship:+Structural+features&hl=en&gl=nl&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESilRItDkmG3mYcXwqapxfcZDNtDXWmFjJ20BrM5mKgTpGNl4GCEc3wBG1SgVG4Qkfk1UziRSqssEvauXbPMzmbYvxEyroERxvZSMRRuHeoalkepvRZbizCauGDr9XCvDVGnh_hA&sig=AHIEtbSHxZngt0IQeYnpruhmhX9SfSugyAModelling the Quechua-Aymara relationship]. Pieter Muysken
Dictionaries
- Diccionario Quechua: Español–Runasimi–English Dictionary of Ayacucho QuechuaAyacucho QuechuaAyacucho is one dialect of the Quechua language, spoken in the Ayacucho region of Peru, as well as by immigrants from Ayacucho in Lima. With roughly a million speakers, it is one of the largest dialects of the language along with Cusco Quechua...
from Clodoaldo Soto Ruiz. It explains Quechua words in Quechua itself and in Spanish and English. - 5 Quechua dictionaries online
- runasimi.de Multilingual Quechua website with online dictionary (xls) Quechua–German–English–Spanish.
- Quechua Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
- Multilingual Dictionary: Spanish–Quechua (Cusco, Ayacucho, Junín, Ancash) – Aymara